


Bury Me Not

by Ribbonshalos



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, One Shot, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 23:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribbonshalos/pseuds/Ribbonshalos
Summary: Red stains every surface. The harsh, last rays of the sun bleeds a neon across the ground, allowing shadows to stretch. The dark points try to grasp him, but he stays just out of reach.





	Bury Me Not

Red stains every surface. The harsh, last rays of the sun bleeds a neon across the ground, allowing shadows to stretch. The dark points try to grasp him, but he stays just out of reach.

The ground is cold. It seeps into his bones, chilling his already escaping heat. McCree breathes out in half a cough. He struggles to sit up. The effort makes a quiet groan rip through his throat before he lays back down. His hat is gone. It lays tilted, upside down, just a few inches away. The hand at his side, clawing into the dirt, twitches at the thought of grabbing it, but he never does.

Wetness slips through his fingers. On his chest, red spills through his armor. The red serape cushions him slightly against the ground, but its comfort is minimal.

A bullet to the heart. It’s how he’s always seen it going down. He got his shot in, shooting the man dead. He had the grace to make his kill swift. For McCree, he lays still, choking and breathing against the cold and red. It won’t be eternal, but it will be soon.

His love. His darling Olivia. His beautiful shadow.

She runs now. Her feet hit the dirt like shooting out of a canon. The playful edge always hanging around the outline of her person is lost to the tension pulling at the edges of her wide eyes.

“Jesse!” Her breath is wild, as if galloping out of her chest as she falls down to her knees.

Desperate fingers snake underneath him, pulling him into her lap. Her hand cradles his head, as if about to lay him down on the bed they make love in. Her eyes remain open, unblinking. She presses her shaking palm over his. The attempt to stop the flow of blood is furious, but failing.

“Jesse,” she gasps. “I’ll get Mercy.”

It’s too late. He latches onto her arm before she can even begin pulling away. The one desire he keeps in his heart will not go unsatisfied.

“Stay… darlin’,” he whispers in a voice coated with red.

Every inch of her stills. Slowly, she drags him into her chest. The blood on her hand soaks between her fingers as she grasps his cheek. The tip of her nose brushes against his beard as she buries herself against him.

His one hand still grabs her arm. She keeps him bound to this moment. Her emotion hides, but he can taste foxglove around the iron on his tongue. His chest becomes cold with the wind.

“Don’t let them bury me in a cold place, alone,” he begs with bloody teeth. She lifts her hand, still clinging to his face. “Take me back to the red desert. There’s a farm. Down the road is a church with my mother’s grave.”

Her bottom lip trembles. Her eyes shimmer with the dust of the ground. The urge to deny him of his plans tears at her tongue. She presses her forehead to his. Clinging to his body, she murmurs a silent agreement.

Her wet lips brush against his cheek. He breathes out, coughing blood onto her neck. It’s nothing but red flecks against her skin.

“Say my name,” she says.  _One last time._ Lifting his eyelids, he finds the beauty mark beside her wide eyes. They drown in purple and blue.

His gloved hand brushes against her cheek, cradling her. She’ll carry him into his last moments. His home is still in her embrace.

“Olivia.”

She is a shadow, existing because of the falling sun. It drops behind the horizon, taking her body with it. Cold slams down into her lap, her hands. The cheek she holds her mouth to becomes unnaturally cool. A noise rises in her throat. A demand maybe, or a call outwards. A sob.

“Jesse,” she says. There is no begging now.

No one remembers the girl pressing her cheek against a dead man’s face.

Tracer finds Talon’s hacker bent over McCree’s body. She shoots. She blames Sombra for putting the bullet in McCree’s heart. There is no time for explanation, and no choice but to lay his body down to rest so she may flee. She snatches up his hat. Overwatch takes his body, but she covets him the most.

They won’t honor his last request. That is what she will give him. His last breath still ghosts into her ears. Her jacket rests on the end of her bed, still splotched with his red. She doesn’t wash it away. She doesn’t hide it in the closet. It stays close by. Her throat is dry and her lips are wet when she rubs the speckles of his blood off of her neck.

She goes to the watchpoint, several times, to take him back, to take him to the little church beside his mother’s grave. They stop her attempts, and try to take revenge for what she did.

“You took McCree away!” they cry out.

“I didn’t kill him.”  _I loved him._

She is not the only one who mourns, but she is the only one who mourns his heartbeat against hers. They do not see her but as the devil herself, trying to steal him away a second time.

They bury him on a cold, windy day. It’s nowhere near red dirt, or the bright sunny place he spoke of. She watches from the shadows. Tears pool as the casket is lowered. There is nothing else to hold as her eyes overflow. Her shoulders loom over and crush her chest.

They couldn’t bury him besides his mother’s grave. She couldn’t give him that.

A rectangular patch of overturned earth remains. The black dressed viewers are gone. Sombra steps into the dying sunset. Roses fall from her hand. They are his headstone until a permanent one arrives. Kneeling, she touches the deep brown dirt. It smells like it’s been wetted by rain.

They do this to him, unable to listen to his dying pleas. She does this to him, unable to act upon his last request.

She takes his hat back to America. She finds the farm house, and the church just down the road. The gravestones are worn by time. McCree’s last name is printed on only one stone. It hasn’t seen visitors in years.

His hat smells like pinewood and smoke. Inhaling it, she’s clutching him into her chest again. He’s murmuring softly, trailing soft circles into her skin. They are both sleepy, and safe. She feels the urge to light a cigarette, and let it burn her insides until there’s nothing left. Her fists clench around the hat. She wants to rip it apart. She wants to scream his name.

Quietly, as if nothing happened to her chest, she places it on top of his mother’s headstone. It stays there, where it belongs. 


End file.
